Snow days and more: Schools update system

People without kids in Ridgefield schools — but who want to receive weather alert emails from the district — have to sign up again as the district moves to clean up an old email list with many unused addresses.

Parents and guardians of schoolchildren don’t have to do anything, since the school district already has their contact information, but parents who want to receive text messages about weather may now do so through an additional messaging service.

Many others are interested in the information besides parents, like neighboring school districts, baby-sitters, day care centers, and child-oriented businesses.

A snow day alert recently mentioned the emails would be discontinued to people who don’t re-subscribe. Schools Technology Director Craig Tunks provided some additional clarification.

“The e-Alert that you received was part of the cleanup of a dormant list that is associated to our district website,” Mr. Tunks wrote in an email. “This is a list that has been part of the district’s website for about five years and as such has become cluttered with many thousands of non-working emails. This is caused by people who do not unsubscribe from the list.

“Because of this the list has not worked correctly and everyone that should receive emails were not. We are attempting to clean-up and extend our communication to the public by going through this process.”

There are two ways to continue to receive announcements. One is to re-register with the current “eAlerts” system by filling out the contact form on ridgefield.org/display/dist/maillists and selecting “eAlert 2013” just above the “select” button.

Another way to get the messages is to sign up to follow Ridgefield schools at CTWeather.com. Unlike the eAlerts system, which is email only, CTWeather.com offers text message alerts as well, Mr. Tunks said.